12 Amazing Photos of the Smithsonian's Secret Collections

By
Trevor English

April, 13th 2016

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The Smithsonian Institution has a seemingly endless collection of artifacts and museum pieces on display, but you may not know that they have huge warehouses filled with everything from rocks to boxes of mice. This large percentage of the Institution's collection is meticulously organized in warehouses cared for by hundred of staff that work around the clock. When you walk into the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. you are presented with a staggering amount of displays. It is then hard to believe that beneath those walls lie artifacts housed mostly in secret. Check out a small peak of everything the Smithsonian has stored away.

Lots and lots of stuffed birds and other animals are stored in drawers and cabinets, all labeled and constantly organized. You can start to see the staggering percentage of what is locked up in comparison to what is on display.

Every shell you can imagine, from the most common to those of the rarest creatures are carefully placed in padded boxes and stored for study at a later date. It would be incredible to walk through even an isle of these archives and see everything you could ever dream of.

Bugs, butterflies, beetles, everything. If insects are your thing, then you will love this row of drawers where you can find endless specimens of every insect imaginable. At this point you might be beginning to notice that having only one of something isn't something that the Smithsonian does often, and if they do, it's probably because it's an ultra rare specimen.

In the above picture, you can get a sense of not only the scale of certain artifacts, but the scale of the the warehouses the collections are stored in. Be thankful that there are people out there like the Smithsonian institution tirelessly preserving history.

Yes, even drawers of perfectly preserved rats and mice are stored in the collection. The exact purpose is not really clear, but if anything they are storing knowledge about species variations or genetic mutations throughout various generations.

What's in those jars you ask? Fish, there are rows and rows of jars filled with fish preserved in formaldehyde in case anyone needs to study them. This would be one area you would want to be really careful to not knock anything over. Nobody wants to clean that up.

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